Hamann Conference

I posted a few months back about the conference "Hamann and the Tradition", and since then the full program has been added online. Check out the program here. It is also worth noting that John R. Betz's book, After Enlightenment (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) appeared recently. Betz's book looks to be one of the most exhaustive works on Hamann in English, and is certainly one of the few.

For those of you unfamilar with the work of Hamann, check out my previous posts here and here.

New Hegel Book

There is a review of Sara MacDonald's book Finding Freedom: Hegel's Philosophy and the Emancipation of Women up at NDPR.

New German Idealism Book

Nectarios Limnatis just published his book German Idealism and the Problem of Knowledge: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel with Springer.

Here is the publisher's description:

The problem of knowledge in German Idealism has drawn increasing attention in recent years. This is the first attempt at a systematic critique that covers all four major figures, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. In examining the evolution of the German idealist discussion with respect to a broad array of concepts (epistemology, metaphysics, logic, dialectic, contradiction, totality, and several others), the author draws from a wide variety of sources in several languages, employs lucid and engaging language, and offers a fresh, incisive and challenging critique.

Limnatis contrasts Kant’s epistemological assertiveness with his ontological scepticism as a critical issue in the development of the discourse in German Idealism, and argues that Fichte’s phenomenological demarche only amplifies the Kantian impasse, but allows him to launch a path-breaking critique of formal logic, and to press forward the dialectic. Schelling’s later restoration of metaphysics aims exactly at overcoming the Fichtean conflict between epistemological monism and ontological dualism. And it is Hegel who synthesizes the preceding discussion and unambiguously addresses the need for a new philosophical logic, the dialectical logic. Limnatis scrutinizes Hegel’s deduction in the Phenomenology, invokes modern genetic epistemology, and advances a non-metaphysical reading of the Science of Logic as a genetic theory of systematic knowledge and as circular epistemology. Emphasizing the unity between the logical and the historical, the distinction between intellectual (verständlich) and rational (vernünftig) explanation, and the cognitive importance of contradiction, the author argues for the prospect of an evolving totality of reflective reason.

This book is published in Springer's series Studies in German Idealism.

Paul Redding's Papers and Hegel Scholarship

I want to point readers to a PhD Hegel Scholarship. The scholarship is to work on a project titled "The God of Hegel's Post-Kantian Idealism", with Paul Redding and Paolo Diego at the University of Sydney. This kind of scholarship is a rare and excellent opportunity. The major limitation is that applicants must be Australian citizens, Australian permanent residents or New Zealand citizens. Here are the details.

I also want to point out that Paul Redding has some very interesting papers posted on his homepage. At the bottom of his page you will see an "online papers" section, which includes a great paper on the "Idealism" of Russell and Moore called "Idealism: a love (of sophia) that dare not speak its name". There are also papers up on Hegel and recognition, Brandom and McDowell, naturalism etc.

Inside/Outside Conference (CFP)

Inside/Outside

An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference

hosted by the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University

April 2nd and 3rd, 2009

Keynote Speakers: Espen Hammer (University of Oslo/Essex) and Terry Pinkard (Georgetown University)

Foregrounding the relationship inside/outside, this conference seeks to consider the effects of this pervasive structuring relation across philosophy, literature, the human sciences, politics, and the arts. What work does this distinction do? How do we understand its ubiquity? Furthermore, what is our contemporary relation to this (perceived?) opposition: do we overcome, dissolve, ignore, work through, maintain, or dialectically negotiate this relationship? Papers exploring these and related questions are welcome.

Some suggestions: scheme and content, content and form, mind and world, interiority and exteriority, self and other, inclusion and exclusion, human and inhuman, literary, aesthetic, and political strategies and figures, historical investigations and genealogies, theological figurations and disfigurations, contemporary philosophical approaches ("continental" and "analytic") to this question, etc.

Please send full papers (for a 45 minute presentation), abstract (300 words max.), and contact information (including institutional affiliation) to insideoutsideconference@gmail.com

Deadline for all submissions is January 15th, 2009.

www.insideoutsideconference.com

German Idealism Workshop

For readers in the New York area, the final meeting for the New York German Idealism Workshop will be held on December 12. Terry Godlove (Hofstra) will present a paper on Kant at the Stony Brook, Manhattan Campus.

Here is all the info:

Terry Godlove (Hofstra): "The Objectivity of Regulative Principles in Kant's Appendix to the Dialectic".

Address: Stony Brook University-Manhattan, 401 Park Ave. South, 2nd
Floor (between. 27th and 28th St.) Tel.: 646 472 2025
Time: 4:30
Thomas Teufel (Baruch College) will respond to Terry's paper.

Email me if you plan to come and would like a copy of the paper.

Classic German Journals Online

Following up on my last post, I want to point readers to Perverse Egalitarianism where Mikhail Emelianov has liked to digitized versions of Hegel and Schelling's Kritisches Journal der Philosophie and Der Teutsche Merkur. This online resource is quite a find, and has links to an incredible number of important journals published in Germany roughly between the 1750s-1810, with the bulk appearing around the 1790s. There are links to famous journals edited by Schiller, Herder, Eberhard, and Feder, too much to actually list, so check it out for yourself.

You will see that I have added a link to this page in the sidebar titled "online resources".

Fichte PDFs in Google Books

Perverse Egalitarianism has linked to a PDF of Fichte's Address to the German Nation and an old book on Fichte by William Smith (1841).

Here is also a link to a book on Fichte by Robert Adamson (1881). Here is a link to a PDF of the The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, translated by William Smith. There are 2 volumes of the Popular Works: Vol. 1, Vol. 2. These contain writings on the Wissenschaftslehre, Religion, History and the State. Also, there is a commentary on Fichte's Science of Knowledge by Charles Everett. A very old translation of the System of Ethics.

Fichte's son and early editor, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, wrote a book called Contributions to Mental Philosophy which you can also download as a PDF. This book looks to be a strange one, a mix of "philosophic form" and "scientific outpouring of the heart." Should be interesting. He also wrote an Anthropology which is here in German.

I also found an old translation of Fichte's Vocation of Man which has been translated as The Destination of Man. This edition appeared in a Catholic series of books, and on the title page you will find a portrait of Jesus.

Here is an early translation of Fichte's 1801 Wissenschaftslehre which was translated as New Exposition of the Science of Knowledge.

Finally, here is a commentary by Ellen Talbot on Fichte. I'm sure there is more. Thanks Google Books! All of these links take you to pages where you can download the books as PDFs.

Schelling and Hegel Bibliographies

Below are some links to bibliographies which are fairly extensive:

Schelling

Hegel

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (Wiki)

The bibliography for the Phenomenology is a wiki page, so you can add things that might be missing.

Kant Yearbook 2010 (CFP)

The Kant Yearbook is now accepting submissions for its second issue in 2010. The Kant Yearbook is an international journal that publishes articles on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. It is the Kant Yearbook's goal to intensify innovative research on Kant on the international scale. For that reason, the Kant Yearbook prefers to publish articles in English, however articles in German will also be accepted. Each issue will be dedicated to a specific topic.The second issue's topic is Metaphysics, and the deadline for submissions is May 10, 2009.

The Kant Yearbook practices double-blind review; i.e. the reviewers are not aware of the identity of a manuscript's author, and the author is not aware of the reviewer's identity. Submitted manuscripts must be anonymous. That is, the authors' names and references to their work capable of identifying them are not to appear in the manuscript.

Editor:
Dietmar H. Heidemann (Hofstra University)

Editorial Board:
Henry E. Allison (University of California at Davis)
Karl Ameriks (Notre Dame)
Gordon Brittan (Montana State University)
Klaus Düsing (University of Cologne)
Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Boston University)
Kristina Engelhard (University of Cologne)
Brigitte Falkenburg (University of Dortmund)
Hannah Ginsborg (University of California at Berkeley)
Michelle Grier (University of San Diego)
Thomas Grundmann (University of Cologne)
Paul Guyer (University of Pennsylvania)
Robert Hanna (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Georg Mohr (University of Bremen)
Angelica Nuzzo (CUNY)
Robert Stern (Sheffield University)
Dieter Sturma (University of Bonn)
Ken Westphal (University of Kent)
Markus Willaschek (University of Frankfurt)

More info here.

Fichte-Kongress 2009

Below is some info about the Fichte-Kongress 2009 (site in German).The Internationalen Fichte-Gesellschaft and Internationalen Schelling-Gesellschaft are co-hosting a conference on "Fichte and Schelling: Idealism in Discussion" October 7-9, 2009 in Belgium at Académie Royale des sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles. The conference is in German, English, and French, but written contributions can also be in Italian and Spanish.

If you want to participate you must register and submit the title of your presentation by May 15, 2009. Texts for contributions must be received by 30 June 2009 at the latest. Conference email: fichteschellingkongress@gmail.com.

Here are the workshop themes and topics:

1) The Concept of Philosophy (i.e. transcendental philosophy, system, identity etc.).

2) Naturphilosophie (teleology, imagination, life-force, Spinozism)
3) Aesthetics
4) Philosophy of Religion
5) Late Philosophy in Comparison
6) Experience of the Groundless and the Irrational
7) Political and Social Conceptions
8) Freedom in Philosophy
9) Fichte and Schelling and Contemporary Philosophy

(a. The Romantics, b. 20th century philosophy, e.g. Husserl and Heidegger)

You will of course find more details at this website about possible topics and how to register and submit. Thanks to David Wood for the heads up.

Hegel, Religion, Mysticism

For those of you interested in Hegel, Religion and Mysticism, Robert Wallace, author of Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom and God (Cambridge, 2005), has a website dedicated to these issues. There you will find pages dedicated to internet resources on mysticism, and also some of his writings on Hegel. Enjoy!

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Critical Guide (Book Review)

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Critical Guide (Cambridge, 2008) looks to be an excellent volume. At NDPR it received a very positive review.

Review of Wood's Kantian Ethics

A critical review of Allen Wood's Kantian Ethics (Cambridge, 2007) appeared in the Time Literary Supplement. The review is by Michael Rosen (Harvard). Here is an excerpt to entice you:

Kantian Ethics is an important and challenging book. The position that it presents is original and its argument is supported by an exceptional knowledge of Kant’s thought, of the Kantian literature and of ethical theory more broadly. It is not, however, a particularly attractive one to read. The tone in which Wood criticizes those with whom he disagrees is hectoring and dyspeptic. They show “a deplorable tendency to think in terms of entrenched prejudices”; they commit “whoppers”, have a “tin ear” for Kant, say things that are “strangely arbitrary and nonsensically extreme”, and so on. Philosophical texts are exceedingly complex, and to enter into their world is not easy. When someone feels that they have grasped what others have missed it is perhaps understandable that they should come to think that, as Wood puts it, “what Kant is trying to say is not making it past the censorship of their philosophical prejudices”. I can appreciate this, not least because I found myself thinking similarly about Wood himself. It seemed to me that his grave-robber’s passion for using Kant to support his own moral convictions had sometimes led him to overlook dimensions of Kant’s theory to which, as an archaeologist, he should have given greater weight. But this thought does not diminish the admiration I feel for the seriousness and erudition with which he sets about his task.

New Kant Book on Embodiment

Angelica Nuzzo (Brooklyn College/CUNY Graduate Center) has published a new work titled Ideal Embodiment: Kant's Theory of Sensibility (Indiana University Press, 2008). Here is the publisher's description:

Angelica Nuzzo offers a comprehensive reconstruction of Kant's theory of sensibility in his three Critiques. By introducing the notion of "transcendental embodiment," Nuzzo proposes a new understanding of Kant's views on science, nature, morality, and art. She shows that the issue of human embodiment is coherently addressed and key to comprehending vexing issues in Kant's work as a whole. In this penetrating book, Nuzzo enters new terrain and takes on questions Kant struggled with: How does a body that feels pleasure and pain, desire, anger, and fear understand and experience reason and strive toward knowledge? What grounds the body's experience of art and beauty? What kind of feeling is the feeling of being alive? As she comes to grips with answers, Nuzzo goes beyond Kant to revise our view of embodiment and the essential conditions that make human experience possible.

Terry Pinkard's Papers

Terry Pinkard (Georgetown) has posted a number of his recent papers on his site. There are some interesting papers on Hegel and spirit and Sellars and Post-Kantianism. He has also posted a draft of his new translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, which will be published by Cambridge. It is about time a new translation of the Phenomenology appear, and as I have mentioned before, the translation of Fichte's Science of Knowledge, published many years ago by Cambridge, is due for a major revision.

Fichte's Proof that p

Fichte: P self-posits itself as p, therefore p.

More here, here, and here.

New Hegel Book (Book Review)

At NDPR there is a positive review of Nathan Ross's book, On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy (Routledge, 2008).

Here is a description from the publisher:

On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy examines the role of the concept of mechanism in Hegel’s thinking about political and social institutions. It counters as overly simplistic the notion that Hegel has an ‘organic concept of society’. It examines the thought of Hegel’s peers and predecessors who critique modern political intuitions as ‘machine-like’, focusing on J.G. Herder, Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. From here it examines the early writings of Hegel, in which Hegel makes a break with the Romantic way of thinking about ethical community. Ross argues that in this period, Hegel devises a new way of thinking about the integration of mechanistic and organic features within an organizational whole. This allows Hegel to offer an innovative theory of modern civil society as a component in ethical life. The second half of the book examines how Hegel develops this thought in his later works. It offers an in depth commentary on the chapter on mechanism in the Science of Logic, and it demonstrates the role of these thoughts in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy offers a critical response to debates over communitarianism by arguing against one of the central figures used by scholars to associate Hegel with communitarian thought, namely the notion that society is organic. In addition, it argues that Hegel political theory is deeply informed by his formal ontology, as developed in the Science of Logic.

New Pippin Book on Hegel

A new Robert Pippin book is coming out on November 30. The book is called: Hegel's Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life.

Book description:
This fresh and original book argues that the central questions in Hegel's practical philosophy are the central questions in modern accounts of freedom: What is freedom, or what would it be to act freely? Is it possible so to act? And how important is leading a free life? Robert Pippin argues that the core of Hegel's answers is a social theory of agency, the view that agency is not exclusively a matter of the self-relation and self-determination of an individual but requires the right sort of engagement with and recognition by others. Using a detailed analysis of key Hegelian texts, he develops this interpretation to reveal the bearing of Hegel's claims on many contemporary issues, including much-discussed core problems in the liberal democratic tradition. His important study will be valuable for all readers who are interested in Hegel's philosophy and in the modern problems of agency and freedom.

What the Fi@#te? (Part 3)

In his "Some Lectures concerning the Scholar's Vocation", Fichte writes:

You can see how important it is not to confuse society as such with that particular, empirically conditioned type of society which we call 'the state.' Desire what a very great man has said [Kant], life in the state is not one of man's absolute aims. The state is, instead, only a means for establishing a perfect society, a means which exists only under specific circumstances. Like all those human institutions which are mere means, the state aims at abolishing itself. The goal of all government is to make government superfluous. Though the time has certainly not yet come, nor do I know how many myriads or myriads of myriads of years it may take...there will certainly be a point in the a priori foreordained career of the human species when all civic bonds will become superfluous. This is hat point when reason, rather than strength or cunning, will be universally recognized as the highest court of appeal. I say "be recognized" because even then men will still make mistakes and injure their fellowmen thereby. All they will then require is the goodwill to allow themselves to be convinced that they erred and, when they are convinced of this, to recant their errors and make amends for the damages. Until we have reached this point we are, speaking quite generally, not even true men [1].

Is Fichte an anarchist? He got into a bit of trouble for saying these things, in part because some conservatives in his audience claimed he was asserting "in ten or twenty years there will be no more kings or princes" [2]. Commentators on Fichte often take these conservative interpretations to be misrepresentations. Breazeale writes, for instance, "though this rumor was obviously designed to undermine Fichte's position with the court, he in fact enjoyed the firm support of the duke and his advisers, who regarded the rumor as a transparent piece of malicious slander" [3]. Goethe quickly caught wind of these rumors and in response Fichte sent him the manuscript of his lectures and published them so as to counter once and for all the claim he was denouncing kings and princes.

But it seems to me the claim is much stronger than most have taken it, though this might be the result of some distance from a certain contexts. Fichte says there will one day be no civic bonds, government will not be needed, and since the state only plays a functional role, its function ought to be geared toward undermining its own necessity. Marx thought something like his. I guess it's not really a form of anarchism insofar as Fichte does designate some role for the state, but it sure sounds like the form of life he has in mind is some kind of anarchism.

Slight change of subjects now: I, like most of you, have been spending too much time following the present political and financial crisis in the US. I have nothing interesting to say about it, and there are plenty of good blogs covering the issue, but this Thomas Friedman line in a recent column at The New York Times did make me laugh:

I've always believed that America's government was a unique political system--one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it.

----

[1] Fichte, "Some Lectures concerning the Scholar's Vocation" in Fichte Early Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Daniel Brezeale (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1988) pp. 156-7.

[2] ibid., 139.

[3] ibid.